Downvotes. Nice. I guess people really don't care about HIV in Africa.
This whole conversation is only serving to make me more and more cynical than I normally like to be. I'm beginning to get the strong impression that there are some members of society that would actually be disappointed if a total cure that could be widely deployed to this plague were found. Like HIV is the enforcer for their idea of proper morals and skin color. I've heard this idea bounced around in LGBT communities before but never really paid it much credence until now.
No, I think where the disagreement lies between you and other posters is that they believe that people are stupid and if they had such a test they wouldn't use condoms... This argument is made for college town and the US (and Europe). And call me cynical but I agree with it, people are dumb, misinformed and would most likely think that they're ok if the test is negative and not bother with condoms. This would actually increase the number of people with aids since people who just contracted aids and are highly contagious will show as negative because they don't have any antibodies yet...
For Third world countries, it's a different matter, I think this test is great. It helps a real problem by providing a convenient way to test for aids to doctors in remote villages and might help slow this awful epidemic...
That argument is absolute shit. The reason people in the demographic of "college towns" use condoms is because they don't want pregnancies, not because they are actually afraid of HIV.
Therefore: 1) This is also an argument for banning The Pill and the like in college towns. Clearly an idiotic idea. 2) Knowing their partner does not have HIV will not prevent people most people from using a condom if they were going to otherwise.
College kids don't worry about HIV to begin with. They will either wear a condom, or won't. Knowing their partner does not have HIV won't effect the decision since that is the default assumption anyway. People inclined to not make this assumption are also intelligent enough to realize that this test has false negatives.
This whole conversation is only serving to make me more and more cynical than I normally like to be. I'm beginning to get the strong impression that there are some members of society that would actually be disappointed if a total cure that could be widely deployed to this plague were found. Like HIV is the enforcer for their idea of proper morals and skin color. I've heard this idea bounced around in LGBT communities before but never really paid it much credence until now.